Abstract
Invasive plant species have long been known to cause extensive damage, both economically and ecologically, to native ecosystems. They have historically been introduced by the public, both intentional and not, for a variety of reasons. Many of the woody shrubs, such as Lonicera maackii and Rosa multiflora were introduced for wildlife cover, forage, and ornamental value. These invasives have quickly out-competed native flora, in many cases drastically impacting and changing the environment they inhabit. In this review, chosen species characteristics have been described, their pathway to invasion explained, and their impacts to native wildlife highlighted. Based on a review of the scientific literature, we determined that not all effects by invasive plants are negative. Many positive impacts can be seen throughout the literature, such as native frogs utilizing Microstegium vimineum for cover and nesting habitat. However, some important invasive plant species were not included in this review due to a lack of literature on the subject of the effects on fauna. While much is known about their economic impact and the impact on native plant species, additional work needs to be done in the field of wildlife research to determine current impacts and future implications of non-native, invasive plants on native fauna.
Highlights
The abundance of exotic, invasive plant species, hereafter invasive species, has increased dramatically in forested and other natural areas over the past few decades leading natural resource managers to become concerned about the future management in these areas
Introduced to the North America as packing material, M. vimineum is unpalatable to most forest herbivores, including generalist species such as O. virginianus showing again how an invasive species may overtake a habitat due to exclusion from browsing, In areas where large populations of O. virginianus and M. vimineum exist, the herbivore prefers to browse other native grasses [64], reducing native plant species and in turn increasing M. vimineum populations [51,65]
This review highlights the impact of invasive plants on fauna in eastern North American ecosystems
Summary
The abundance of exotic, invasive plant species, hereafter invasive species, has increased dramatically in forested and other natural areas over the past few decades leading natural resource managers to become concerned about the future management in these areas. Invasive species can cause extensive environmental damage once they are established by altering ecosystem structure and function, which may lead to changes in nutrient cycling and decreased forest productivity in the invaded area [1,2]. While research on the negative impacts of invasive plants on native flora diversity and production has been extensively documented [4,9,10,11], the effects of these invasive species on the native fauna are not as clear. We hypothesize that invasive species may have positive, as well as negative, impacts and that classifying invasive plants as either “good” or “bad” for a native ecosystem is missing the big picture. We will examine the current literature to determine the response of native fauna, both negative and positive, to some of the more common invasive plant species. Though our expertise lies within eastern forests, the main points of this review are readily applicable to other woodland areas
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